Environmental groups and climate change activists vowed to block every inch of the Keystone XL oil pipeline’s construction after President Trump approved the project Friday.
Groups such as anti-fossil fuel advocates 350.org said they also plan to take their fight to local congressional districts during Congress’ April recess and prod lawmakers to publicly renounce support for the pipeline.
An April 29 weekend of climate protests are planned in Washington, where Keystone XL opposition will be prominently on display, they say.
“While U.S. politics have changed in the past few months, some things haven’t: Keystone XL is still a climate disaster, it is still opposed by indigenous peoples from Alberta to Nebraska to the Gulf of Mexico, and it still will be fought tooth and nail,” said Clayton Thomas-Muller, with the group’s “Stop-it-at-the-Source” campaign that will be mobilizing the on-the-ground resistance along the pipeline’s route.
The group is considered one of the founders of the “Keep it in the Ground” movement, which seeks to stop all mining and drilling for fossil fuels and transition to 100 percent renewables to stave off the worst effects of global warming. Many scientists blame carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of oil and coal for driving manmade climate change.
Environmental groups pointed out Friday that the State Department in approving the project did not cite climate change among the “range of factors” it examined before giving it the thumbs up. Former President Barack Obama had stalled the project for nearly seven years before rejecting it in November 2015 ahead of talks in Paris to approve the world’s first climate change deal.
Other Keep it in the Ground groups, such as Oil Change International, said Friday’s Keystone XL decision “isn’t game over, it’s game on,” according to Executive Director Stephen Kretzmann.
“Donald Trump likes to talk a big game when it comes to laying pipe, but landowners, native nations and climate activists aren’t going to let him get away with groping America,” he added, referring to Trump’s lewd off-camera remarks to NBC’s former Access Hollywood host Billy Bush in 2005 that were revealed during last year’s presidential campaign. “Put your tiny hands in the air, Trump, and back away from the climate,” Kretzmann said.
The groups say they don’t care if the politician is liberal or conservative. If they support fossil energy and Keystone XL, they are a target.
“Any politician siding with the fossil fuel industry on Keystone, be they named [Canadian Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau or Trump, is in for one hell of a fight,” said 350.org’s Thomas-Muller.
The group said it is planning to protest the construction of the segment that will stem from the Canadian border through Nebraska. The protests promise to be similar to those last year in North Dakota, where protesters and native groups sought to block the final segment of the Dakota Access pipeline.
Trump issued a directive in January approving Dakota Access, which was expected to begin shipping oil this week. On the same day, he issued a 60-day deadline for State Department to approve Keystone XL. The deadline would have been up this weekend.
Thomas-Muller’s group said it is “planning to support resistance along the pipeline route, mobilize millions of Americans to send in comments and petitions against the project, push politicians during the April recess and beyond to come out against Keystone XL, and use the fight against the pipeline to fire up resistance to other fossil fuel projects across the country.”
Democratic leaders in Washington are also promising a fight over the project. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, said Trump’s decision will surely go to court.
“This administration and its apologists in Washington seem to take a perverse joy in harming Native American rights and our environment just to prove they’re in charge,” Grijalva said Friday. “The fight is not over and this approval will end up in court.”
Many groups such as the Natural Resource Defense Council have been beefing up legal staff and raising funds to oppose Trump on Keystone XL and other anti-climate change actions that the administration plans to take in the coming weeks and months. One issue raised prominently on a call Friday was that despite the approval, there is still “no legal route” through Nebraska for the pipeline, after a court repealed a law in 2014 that gave the governor the authority to approve Keystone XL.
“While TransCanada has applied for a state permit, a decision may take up to 12 months and the permit may be denied,” a coalition of groups said in a statement pulling together the legal response to the Keystone decision. “After that, TransCanada must rely on eminent domain to take private lands along the route.”
Environmental groups also are targeting the finances of the company building the pipeline, TransCanada, by pressuring large lending institutions and banks not to provide financial services to the company to complete the project.
“It takes money to build a pipeline, and the opposition movement to stop fossil fuel projects like Keystone will do everything it can to deprive TransCanada of any new funding for this ill-fated and unnecessary pipeline,” said Greenpeace USA Executive Director Annie Leonard. “TransCanada may have a permit, but can they find the funding?”
Greenpeace is asking banks such as Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America “to not provide financial services to TransCanada that could help construct the pipeline.”
The group claimed victory earlier this month in getting the State Department to disclose that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had recused himself from the Keystone XL decision-making process, since the company he once ran, Exxon Mobil, would stand to benefit from the project. The State Department has main authority over approving oil pipeline permits that cross the border from a foreign country. Friday’s decision to move forward with the project came from the State Department.
Greenpeace still wants the agency to provide documentation about Tillerson’s recusal.
